Ghana will be among the more than 160 nations at the 29th Olympiad in Beijing, China beginning August 8 2008. It will be Ghana’s 12th participation in the Olympic Games dating back from the XVTH Games in Helsinki, Finland in 1952 .Ghana will be competing in athletics and boxing.

Between now and the start of the Games I would like to provide a historic account of Ghana’s record at the four year interval sports extravaganza but first lets have a brief history of how the Olympic Games started.

Sports historians say the original Olympic Games were founded in 776 BC and according to tradition were held at Olympia every four years without a single break until at least AD 261. The modern Olympic Games were started in 1896 in Athens by a Frenchman Pierre de Fredy Baron de Coubertin, who was born in Paris on Ist January 1863.

Though an elitist, Coubertin was not a wholly typical French aristocrat of his time. He foresaw a day when young men from the lower class might share his new ideology of physical exercises and games. He had a strong belief that a revived Olympic festival would further the cause of international understanding, brotherhood and peace.

By 1894 Coubertin had made sufficient progress in his plans to revive the Olympics and he summoned an international conference in Paris and the Sorbonne "to study and propagate the principles of amateurism".

He then set off for Greece and in October of that year he visited Olympia for the first time in his life. Two years later in 1896, the first modern Olympic Games were held in Athens.

Practical considerations of access and facilities for both athletes and spectators ruled Olympia out. Athens provided a new stadium with seating capacity of nearly 50,000 There were 42 events in ten sports disciplines with 285 participants all men and without team competitions except gymnastics.

Coubertin’s efforts had come to fruition and he remained president of the International Olympic Committee until the completion of the 1924 Games in Paris.

Since 1896, the Games have followed a tradition of being celebrated every four years. Infact the Games cannot under any circumstances be postponed to another date. If they are not held, the number of the Olympiad remains. This was the case in 1916 (V1th Olympiad) 1940 and 1944(X11th and X111th Olympiads) when the games were not celebrated apparently due to the world wars.

The four year interval was decided by the founder mainly in remembrance of the Ancient Games that observed this regular cycle and also he rightly predicted the huge expenses and difficulties involved in organizing such a world wide festival.

The Centenary Olympics were celebrated in Atlanta USA in 1996. The 2008 Games in Beijing will be the 29th Olympiad.